In Infostream, adult, “nontraditional” online dating services objected to PayPal’s refusal to deal with them, and alleged that PayPal’s contractual excuse was pretextual because PayPal was dealing with competitors such as Ashley Madison.com and ArrangementFinders.com. Plaintiffs alleged that PayPal has a monopoly in the “Confidential Payment Services” market and exercised its monopoly power in that market to injure competition in downstream markets, including the “Specialty Online Dating Services” market in which plaintiffs compete.

The problem for plaintiffs is that PayPal does not compete in the plaintiffs’ market. In Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. United Airlines, Inc., 948 F.2d 536 (9th Cir. 1991), the Ninth Circuit rejected monopoly leveraging doctrine as an independent theory of liability under the Sherman Act.

Although plaintiffs alleged that they had a “belief” that PayPal has an ownership interest in plaintiffs’ competitors, that allegation raised plausibility concerns under Iqbal and Twombly. Moreover, plaintiffs did not allege a dangerous probability of success in the downstream market, and in fact “wholly failed to allege any specific facts with respect to market power of their competitors . . . .”

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